User:And Rosta: Difference between revisions

From Lojban
Jump to navigation Jump to search
mNo edit summary
 
mNo edit summary
Line 1: Line 1:
== And ==


Note that sometimes, due to grammatical ambiguities in the English language, sometimes the connective ''and'' is confused for the name ''And''.


As [[jbocre: pne|pne]] understand it, the practice of distinguishing between agent (ergative) and non-agent (absolutive), rather than between nonpatient (nominative) and patient (accusative) as is common in Indo-European languages.
Cf. the amusing misunderstanding in [[jbocre: New Growth Lojbanist|New Growth Lojbanist]], repeated here:


For a '''very''' brief overview of different case-marking systems, see [http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/r.html] -- part of a rant against Esperanto, but you can ignore that here; this appendix focuses only on cases. Ergative languages use approach (E) in his list.
la maikl. I think is sui generis :-) (I was wondering this myself.) And probably is more of a 'tweener than anything else (confirmed). Perhaps he's the 'tweener equivalent of pc? :-) -- mi'e [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]].


''How do we express this in Lojban? gausmi?''
michael seems like a nice guy, though. Yup, that's what I meant by sui generis! so whats with the comparison to pc, then?


* ''gernrgativiti'' --[[User:And Rosta|And Rosta]] (mi stidi)
Cause neither can be understood? Oh, Lordy. This is not the first time this has happened. In "And probably is more of a 'tweener than anything else", And = And Rosta! And I'm comparing And to pc because of their formal bias, though of course And is more formal than pc...


Unfortunately English not always marks this distinction (e.g. "return",
----
 
the infamous keyword of ''xruti'')... See [[jbocre: Ergativity|Ergativity]].
 
== Non-Agentive form & it's corresponding Agentive: ==
 
|| cfari | begins | cfagau | initiates
 
denpa | pauses | depygau | delays
 
tolcfa | comes to a stop | sisti/dicra | halts/interrupts)
 
sezyxru | reverts | xruti | restores
 
cenba | varies | cenbygau/cnegau | alters
 
jelca | burns | jelgau | ignites
 
snura | is secure | bandu | protects
 
masno | is slow | snogau/jabre | retards/brakes)
 
muvdu | moves | muvgau | causes to move
 
mrobi'o | dies | catra | kills
 
banro | develops | banrygau | nurtures
 
zenba | increases | zengau | augments
 
banzu | suffices | bazgau | fulfills
 
culno | is full | tisna | fills
 
basti | takes the place of | basygau | replaces
 
klama | goes | bevri | conveys
 
bilma | is sick | bilmygau | sickens
 
bredi | is ready | redgau | prepares
 
carna | turns | cargau | rotates
 
selcfipu | is confused | cfipu | confuses
 
cilre | learns | ctuca | teaches


ckeji | feels ashamed | kejgau | humiliates
If you came here looking for words meaning "and", candidates are ''je, .ije, .e, ce, ce'o, fa'u, joi, ge, gu'e, gi'e, zi'e''.


kakne | is able | curmi | allows
== And Rosta ==
I've just noticed that if you google for me, this is the first page that comes up. You can contact me [mailto:[email protected] thus].


curve | is pure | cuvgau | purifies
My start at a translation of ''[[jbocre: The Importance of Being Earnest|The Importance of Being Earnest]]''.


danfu | is an answer | dafsku/frati | replies
Fragmentary notes, obsolete or incomplete


drani | is correct | dragau | rectifies
* [[jbocre: On the meaning of 'ro broda cu brode'|On the meaning of 'ro broda cu brode']]


farlu | falls | falgau | drops
==== If you feel compelled to annotate this page, please don't mess up the layout too much. Use a perspicuous layout that does not destroy the integrity of the original text. ====


fatne | is backwards | fatygau | reverses
I belong to the Conlanger class of Lojbanist, i.e. I joined in 1991 as a result of conlang afficionadodom (see [[jbocre: New Growth Lojbanist|New Growth Lojbanist]]). I am therefore one of the [[jbocre: 'Tweeners|'tweeners]]. I am a member of [[jbocre: LLG|LLG]] since 2001. I am one of the [[jbocre: hardliners|hardliners]] -- perhaps the hardest!


febvi | comes to a boil | fabgau | boils
I mean to collect together some links to Lojban poems & translations, but it's a bit of a struggle finding them in the list archives.


porpi | comes apart | popygau | breaks
* [http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9411/msg00274.html Limerick 'lo ni fa le vi nanmu cu pinji']
** with a correction [http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9412/msg00318.html there], [http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9412/msg00007.html there]


fukpi | is a copy | fukyzba | duplicates
* aha, here's [http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9412/msg00097.html a corrected version] with a bonus limerick to boot
* [http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9412/msg00099.html and Jorge's limerick reply]


gacri | is a cover | gairgau | covers over
* [http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9412/msg00080.html more limericks by me & Jorge, plus one of his Lojban limericks rendered as an English limerick by me]
** [http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9412/msg00082.html Jorge in riposte]


ganlo | is closed | ganlygau | closes
** [http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9412/msg00081.html another English limerick translationoid of Jorge's]
* I can't find my first haiku in the archives, nor my translation into English of Jorge's Thanksgiving poem


gusni | illumines | gusygau | illuminates
==== Manifesto (cf that in [[jbocre: Jay Kominek|Jay Kominek]]) ====


jdika | contracts | jdikygau | decreases
[[jbocre: still in progress|still in progress]]


jinru | bathes | jirgau | immerses
* Lojban is interesting because it is the most sophisticated published [[jbocre: engelang|engineered language]].
* Engineered languages are interesting in the way that any engineering is, especially when it tries to improve on biology (cf. robotics). Part of the interest is that it tells us more about the biology, and part of the interest is that we have a human desire to improve our tools. I am interested in discovering how (and whether) the tool of natural language can be improved upon. (I don't think Lojban itself is an improvement on, say, English, but I do believe in the viability of designing a language that is better than any natural language. (Better by some set of relatively objective criteria that I may enumerate here at a future time.]


jorne | is joined to | jongau | connects
* Lojban usage is valuable because it tests/proves the language design. Even if your only goal is the design itself, part of the process of optimizing the design is to test prototypes in actual use.
* Valuable usage needs to pay scrupulous attention to a grammar. What is important is not to make ourselves understood (-- for when we succeed in making ourselves understood that is testimony only to the brilliance of the mind's pragmatic powers; it tells us little about the language), but to say exactly what we intend to say -- to produce sentences whose meaning is exactly the meaning we intended to encode.


katna | cutter | katnygau | cuts
* I follow a personal policy of making no conscious efforts to learn Lojban, and I am rarely moved to read or write or speak it. Consequently there are big gaps in my knowledge, especially in the gismu and some of the less interesting selmaho. The amount of Lojban that I've written over the years is in fact surpringly large, given my avowed lack of motivation to use Lojban.


burcu | brush | bruzu'e | paints
* Were it up to me, Lojban would never have been baselined. The process of improving the design would be ongoing and effectively never-ending.
* However, 99% of Lojbanists [not an unreasonable estimate] wanted the baseline. Accordingly, on democratic grounds I am now firmly in favour of the official grammar being baselined. Indeed, I am in favour of a permanent baseline. I think the LLG should not put its stamp of approval on any further revisions.


komcu | is a comb | komzu'e | combs
* At the same time, I am in favour of exploring, through design and usage, various changes to the baseline, so long as these changes are understood to be unofficial.
* Indeed, while I get very impatient with sloppy usage that doesn't say what it is intended to (even if it gets understood correctly), and while I get equally impatient with sloppy or solecistic usage that gets entrenched and conventionalized through sheer frequency of use, I am in favour of anything that subverts the baseline, on the grounds that I see no virtue in it except the simple fact that 99% of Lojbanists wanted it.


korcu | is bent | krogau | bends
** In a sense, then, I'm quite sympathetic to the Naturalists, in that they want Lojban to evolve naturally, much as a pidgin would, and for the resulting language to be defined, as with a natlang, by the usage and/or idiolects of the speakers themselves. What makes me sympathetic to this is that it makes the baseline an irrelevance, an artefact of solely historical interest. Of course, I differ from the Naturalists in wishing for the language to continue to be engineered, and for usage to scrupulously follow an explicit grammar.
** Further of my relevant opinions are given under [[jbocre: On the baseline conformance imperative|On the baseline conformance imperative]].


krefu | repeats | refygau | causes to recur
* Lojban's virtues as a language are relative rather than absolute. As I said above, it is the most sophisticated published [[jbocre: Engelang|Engelang]], but it has the potential for enormous improvement. By 'enormous improvement' I mean starting again from scratch, but with the benefit of the experience gained from Lojban. I have been asked "Well why don't you go off and create a better language, then?" The answer is that I have, but that doesn't stop Lojban being the most sophisticated engelang that has been published and has a small community of experts focused around it. Hence the inadequacy of Lojban as a language design does not diminish its interest.


kunti | is empty | kutygau | vacates
'''Below is a copy of parts of [[jbocre: Jay Kominek|Jay's manifesto]] with some comments from me (in italics) interspersed.'''


gapru | is above | lafti | lifts
Since these pages are reference material, here is a quick reference guide to my positions on Lojban policy.


lunbe | is bare | lubgau | denudes
The grammar of the baseline is sacrosanct.


manku | is dark | mangau | darkens
''The fact that I agree with this statement indicates that it is a doctrine susceptible to multiple interpretations.''


mapti | fits | matygau | matches
Its a nice and complete grammar sufficently complex and detailed to allow the expression of anything anyone should want to express. (See under Tinkering)


muvdu | is in motion | muvgau | moves
''Complexity and detail is not necessary to allow the expression of anything anyone should want to express. All that goal requires is a very basic grammar and a very large lexicon. What the complexity and detail give us, in the main, are less cumbersome ways of expressing things. And of course, there is great scope for making Lojban less cumbersome.''


selnupre | is a promise | nupre | promises
The number of programmers out there who have been mastering LALR(1) programming languages for years shows that humans can learn and process LALR(1) languages at high speed, even if the semantics are extensible and possibly infinite.


pagre | penetrates | gregau | causes to penetrate
The semantics of existing documents should not be violated.


panlo | is a slice | panlyzba | slices
Otherwise why should anyone want to write anything? It might be declared nonsensical tomorrow, or even yesterday in the message you missed because your mail server was dropping email.


pijne | is a pin | pijnylasna | pins
''The value of writing something in Lojban is to test the design. Even with the baseline in place, much of what is written is nonsensical, anyway -- or so I find on the occasions when I take the trouble to read Lojban. If there came some golden age when the design of Lojban had evolved to such an extent that it was better than that of, say, English, then would it would be worth choosing Lojban as the language in which to write things intended to be permanent and not merely ephemerally comprehensible.''


pindi | is poor | pidgau | impoverishes
Tinkering isn't an appropriate use of Lojban


preti | is a question | retsku/tese preti | asks a question
Why tinker with Lojban and try to force your changes upon others (when you never intend to use the language), when instead you could simply tinker with your own pet languages, and you'd never have to deal with anyone arguing with you? Much less stress...


preja | expands | pejgau | spreads
''No tinkerers seriously try to force their changes upon others. Being argued with it one of the positive benefits of being a Lojban tinkerer. The tinkering is conducted as a dialectic, which can often be more profitable than labouring in solitude. If tinkering was not appropriate to Lojban, it would not have come to exist in the first place; it is the product of several generations of committees of tinkerers. To continue to tinker with Lojban is to continue that tradition -- is to continue to develop the very thing that makes Lojban special and worthy of interest.''


cpana | is on | punji | puts on/at
There is no reason to believe there are things which Lojban can't express. Its easily as complex and rich as a natural language. Just because the construction you want isn't immediately obvious doesn't mean IMMINENT DEATH OF LOJBAN PREDICTED, NEWS AT 11.


zvati | at | punji | puts on/at
''This is true. However, except to the naive, the real issue is not whether something can be expressed, but how conveniently and elegantly it can be expressed. ('Elegance' not as in floweriness but having to do with harmony and symmetry with with the rest of the language.)''


punli | is a swelling | pulgau | swells
However, anyone can do anything they please as long as it doesn't hurt anyone.


ranji | lasts | ranjygau | causes to last (makes lasting)
''This, prevailing, view, is one reason why, uniquely, Lojban has not undergone schism.''


ranti | is soft | rangau | softens
But if I felt that the tinkering harmed the language community...


ricfu | is rich | cfugau | enriches
Semantic exploration is a noble use of Lojban


panzi | offspring | rorci | procreates
''I'm not sure what that is, but it sounds good.''


viknu | is thick | viknygau | thickens
This form of exploration is a worthy goal in any language, as it tends to expand ones mind. Unlike tinkering with the grammar, where you just change the set of rules that have to be memorized, semantic exploration has instant rewards.


ruble | is weak | blegau | weakens
''Each to his own. Needless to say, to me tinkering with the grammar is not merely "changing the set of rules that have to be memorized".''


runme | is melting | rumgau | makes melt
Usage is the only real way to sway opinion.


runta | dissolves | runtygau | makes dissolve
''Thankfully this is not wholly true. If it were, we could just give up on Lojban as it spiralled into the pits of inconsistency, illogicality, ungrammaticality, and sundry other vices it was designed to be free from. Fortunately a handful of voluble mavens labour to stem the tide.''


sepli | is apart | fendi | divides
Anyone arguing for <foo> while not using <foo> in their Lojban, or while not even using Lojban, is living in a state of sin, as far as I'm concerned. Further their statements carry no weight to me.
 
nenri | is within | setca | inserts
 
jbini | is between | setca | interposes
 
spoja | explodes | pojgau | blows up
 
sraku | is sharp | rakygau | scratches
 
sudga | is dry | sudgau | dries off
 
sutra | is fast | sutygau | hastens
 
tcena | stretches | tengau | extends
 
terpa | fears | tepygau | frightenss
 
tinsa | is stiff | tensygau | stiffens
 
titla | is sweet | titygau | sweetens
 
tordu | is short | torgau | shortens
 
tsali | is strong | tsagau | strengthens
 
tsapi | ia a spice | tsapygau | seasons
 
vasru | contains | vasygau | encloses
 
vlipa | is powerful | vligau | empowers
 
vreji | is a record of | rejgau | records
 
vrusi | is a flavor | vusyga'e | tastes
 
panci | is an odor | sumne | smells
 
zasti | exists | zbasu | creates
 
zekri | is a crime | zerzukte | commits a crime
 
zifre | is free | zifygau | liberates ||
 
(There are doubtless others.)
 
* The place structure of ''xruti'' has changed during its history...
** A note [http://66.111.43.200/~jkominek/nuzban/wiki/index.php?Gismu%20list%20errata here] says (1994) that ''xruti'' was to become non-agentive, although it remains agentive on the ''gismu'' lists of 9-6-94.
 
** I will have to check my notes, but IIRC the non-agentive meaning was changed to the present agentive at about the same time as the Great Rafsi Shift.
 
* Lojban distinguishes [[jbocre: forms of causation|forms of causation]]...One could extend the foregoing series with ''each of the others''.
 
* One must also consider the "hidden doers", those with non-x1 agent places:
** ''smuni'' has meaning---------------''tersmu'' interprets
 
** ''tatpi'' is tired------------------''seltatpi'' tires
** ''fengu'' is angry------------------''selfengu'' angers
 
** ''torni'' is twisting---------------''seltorni'' twists
** ''xalni'' is panicked---------------''selxalni'' terrifies
 
** ''zgike'' is music------------------''selzgi'' makes music
 
----


That's a very useful list. We shouldn't overlook the usefulness of ''zil-'', though:
''As my 'manifesto' says, I of course take the opposite view -- that the weight accorded to someone's statements about Lojban is determined by the inherent value (sagacity, etc) of those statements, and it is irrelevant whether the person uses Lojban.''


;''zilsti'' comes to a stop :''sisti'' halts (or ''dicra'' interrupts)
''Anyone using <foo> when they actually mean <bar> is, as far as I'm concerned, not quite living in a state of sin, but certainly contributing little to Lojban and, if their usage is influential, possibly even damaging to Lojban.''


;''zilxru'' reverts :''xruti'' restores
Arguing about a topic, with the same people, as you've argued in the past is a waste of time.


;''zilcatra'' dies :''catra'' kills
Whenever you decide you want to argue about something you've argued before, just go read the mailing list archives and live vicariously through your previous arguments.


;''zilcfipu'' is confused :''cfipu'' confuses
''It is true that a lack of a decent system of records for discussions is a great hindrance, but those arguments generally go in spirals, not circles. Anybody who isn't interested in the arguments needn't participate. Anybody annoyed by their presence on [[jbocre: Lojban mailing list|Lojban List]] can ask for the discussion to move to [[jbocre: Jboske|Jboske]]. But it is thanks to these arguments that Lojban has the degree of sophistication that it has.''


--[[User:And Rosta|And Rosta]]
=BPFK=
This member presides over the following sections:


* Wouldn't "is killed" be better as a translation than "dies"? That is, there has to be a killer or there isn't really any ''catra''ing involved. I'd use ''mrobi'o'' (become dead) for just plain dying "without a cause". (And I'm not sure whether consensus was reached on the usage of ''zil-'' in this manner. ''xu la .andban. lojbo?'') --mi'e [[jbocre: pne|.filip.]]
[[BPFK Section: Modal Aspects]]
* It's a reasonable suspicion to have when I say something, but in this instance it's pretty uncontroversial, at least among the jboskepre. (I can't speak for nonjboskpre, since I don't get to hear their relevant views.)
[[Category:BPFK member]]

Revision as of 16:43, 4 November 2013

And

Note that sometimes, due to grammatical ambiguities in the English language, sometimes the connective and is confused for the name And.

Cf. the amusing misunderstanding in New Growth Lojbanist, repeated here:

la maikl. I think is sui generis :-) (I was wondering this myself.) And probably is more of a 'tweener than anything else (confirmed). Perhaps he's the 'tweener equivalent of pc? :-) -- mi'e nitcion.

michael seems like a nice guy, though. Yup, that's what I meant by sui generis! so whats with the comparison to pc, then?

Cause neither can be understood? Oh, Lordy. This is not the first time this has happened. In "And probably is more of a 'tweener than anything else", And = And Rosta! And I'm comparing And to pc because of their formal bias, though of course And is more formal than pc...


If you came here looking for words meaning "and", candidates are je, .ije, .e, ce, ce'o, fa'u, joi, ge, gu'e, gi'e, zi'e.

And Rosta

I've just noticed that if you google for me, this is the first page that comes up. You can contact me thus.

My start at a translation of The Importance of Being Earnest.

Fragmentary notes, obsolete or incomplete

If you feel compelled to annotate this page, please don't mess up the layout too much. Use a perspicuous layout that does not destroy the integrity of the original text.

I belong to the Conlanger class of Lojbanist, i.e. I joined in 1991 as a result of conlang afficionadodom (see New Growth Lojbanist). I am therefore one of the 'tweeners. I am a member of LLG since 2001. I am one of the hardliners -- perhaps the hardest!

I mean to collect together some links to Lojban poems & translations, but it's a bit of a struggle finding them in the list archives.

Manifesto (cf that in Jay Kominek)

still in progress

  • Lojban is interesting because it is the most sophisticated published engineered language.
  • Engineered languages are interesting in the way that any engineering is, especially when it tries to improve on biology (cf. robotics). Part of the interest is that it tells us more about the biology, and part of the interest is that we have a human desire to improve our tools. I am interested in discovering how (and whether) the tool of natural language can be improved upon. (I don't think Lojban itself is an improvement on, say, English, but I do believe in the viability of designing a language that is better than any natural language. (Better by some set of relatively objective criteria that I may enumerate here at a future time.]
  • Lojban usage is valuable because it tests/proves the language design. Even if your only goal is the design itself, part of the process of optimizing the design is to test prototypes in actual use.
  • Valuable usage needs to pay scrupulous attention to a grammar. What is important is not to make ourselves understood (-- for when we succeed in making ourselves understood that is testimony only to the brilliance of the mind's pragmatic powers; it tells us little about the language), but to say exactly what we intend to say -- to produce sentences whose meaning is exactly the meaning we intended to encode.
  • I follow a personal policy of making no conscious efforts to learn Lojban, and I am rarely moved to read or write or speak it. Consequently there are big gaps in my knowledge, especially in the gismu and some of the less interesting selmaho. The amount of Lojban that I've written over the years is in fact surpringly large, given my avowed lack of motivation to use Lojban.
  • Were it up to me, Lojban would never have been baselined. The process of improving the design would be ongoing and effectively never-ending.
  • However, 99% of Lojbanists [not an unreasonable estimate] wanted the baseline. Accordingly, on democratic grounds I am now firmly in favour of the official grammar being baselined. Indeed, I am in favour of a permanent baseline. I think the LLG should not put its stamp of approval on any further revisions.
  • At the same time, I am in favour of exploring, through design and usage, various changes to the baseline, so long as these changes are understood to be unofficial.
  • Indeed, while I get very impatient with sloppy usage that doesn't say what it is intended to (even if it gets understood correctly), and while I get equally impatient with sloppy or solecistic usage that gets entrenched and conventionalized through sheer frequency of use, I am in favour of anything that subverts the baseline, on the grounds that I see no virtue in it except the simple fact that 99% of Lojbanists wanted it.
    • In a sense, then, I'm quite sympathetic to the Naturalists, in that they want Lojban to evolve naturally, much as a pidgin would, and for the resulting language to be defined, as with a natlang, by the usage and/or idiolects of the speakers themselves. What makes me sympathetic to this is that it makes the baseline an irrelevance, an artefact of solely historical interest. Of course, I differ from the Naturalists in wishing for the language to continue to be engineered, and for usage to scrupulously follow an explicit grammar.
    • Further of my relevant opinions are given under On the baseline conformance imperative.
  • Lojban's virtues as a language are relative rather than absolute. As I said above, it is the most sophisticated published Engelang, but it has the potential for enormous improvement. By 'enormous improvement' I mean starting again from scratch, but with the benefit of the experience gained from Lojban. I have been asked "Well why don't you go off and create a better language, then?" The answer is that I have, but that doesn't stop Lojban being the most sophisticated engelang that has been published and has a small community of experts focused around it. Hence the inadequacy of Lojban as a language design does not diminish its interest.

Below is a copy of parts of Jay's manifesto with some comments from me (in italics) interspersed.

Since these pages are reference material, here is a quick reference guide to my positions on Lojban policy.

The grammar of the baseline is sacrosanct.

The fact that I agree with this statement indicates that it is a doctrine susceptible to multiple interpretations.

Its a nice and complete grammar sufficently complex and detailed to allow the expression of anything anyone should want to express. (See under Tinkering)

Complexity and detail is not necessary to allow the expression of anything anyone should want to express. All that goal requires is a very basic grammar and a very large lexicon. What the complexity and detail give us, in the main, are less cumbersome ways of expressing things. And of course, there is great scope for making Lojban less cumbersome.

The number of programmers out there who have been mastering LALR(1) programming languages for years shows that humans can learn and process LALR(1) languages at high speed, even if the semantics are extensible and possibly infinite.

The semantics of existing documents should not be violated.

Otherwise why should anyone want to write anything? It might be declared nonsensical tomorrow, or even yesterday in the message you missed because your mail server was dropping email.

The value of writing something in Lojban is to test the design. Even with the baseline in place, much of what is written is nonsensical, anyway -- or so I find on the occasions when I take the trouble to read Lojban. If there came some golden age when the design of Lojban had evolved to such an extent that it was better than that of, say, English, then would it would be worth choosing Lojban as the language in which to write things intended to be permanent and not merely ephemerally comprehensible.

Tinkering isn't an appropriate use of Lojban

Why tinker with Lojban and try to force your changes upon others (when you never intend to use the language), when instead you could simply tinker with your own pet languages, and you'd never have to deal with anyone arguing with you? Much less stress...

No tinkerers seriously try to force their changes upon others. Being argued with it one of the positive benefits of being a Lojban tinkerer. The tinkering is conducted as a dialectic, which can often be more profitable than labouring in solitude. If tinkering was not appropriate to Lojban, it would not have come to exist in the first place; it is the product of several generations of committees of tinkerers. To continue to tinker with Lojban is to continue that tradition -- is to continue to develop the very thing that makes Lojban special and worthy of interest.

There is no reason to believe there are things which Lojban can't express. Its easily as complex and rich as a natural language. Just because the construction you want isn't immediately obvious doesn't mean IMMINENT DEATH OF LOJBAN PREDICTED, NEWS AT 11.

This is true. However, except to the naive, the real issue is not whether something can be expressed, but how conveniently and elegantly it can be expressed. ('Elegance' not as in floweriness but having to do with harmony and symmetry with with the rest of the language.)

However, anyone can do anything they please as long as it doesn't hurt anyone.

This, prevailing, view, is one reason why, uniquely, Lojban has not undergone schism.

But if I felt that the tinkering harmed the language community...

Semantic exploration is a noble use of Lojban

I'm not sure what that is, but it sounds good.

This form of exploration is a worthy goal in any language, as it tends to expand ones mind. Unlike tinkering with the grammar, where you just change the set of rules that have to be memorized, semantic exploration has instant rewards.

Each to his own. Needless to say, to me tinkering with the grammar is not merely "changing the set of rules that have to be memorized".

Usage is the only real way to sway opinion.

Thankfully this is not wholly true. If it were, we could just give up on Lojban as it spiralled into the pits of inconsistency, illogicality, ungrammaticality, and sundry other vices it was designed to be free from. Fortunately a handful of voluble mavens labour to stem the tide.

Anyone arguing for <foo> while not using <foo> in their Lojban, or while not even using Lojban, is living in a state of sin, as far as I'm concerned. Further their statements carry no weight to me.

As my 'manifesto' says, I of course take the opposite view -- that the weight accorded to someone's statements about Lojban is determined by the inherent value (sagacity, etc) of those statements, and it is irrelevant whether the person uses Lojban.

Anyone using <foo> when they actually mean <bar> is, as far as I'm concerned, not quite living in a state of sin, but certainly contributing little to Lojban and, if their usage is influential, possibly even damaging to Lojban.

Arguing about a topic, with the same people, as you've argued in the past is a waste of time.

Whenever you decide you want to argue about something you've argued before, just go read the mailing list archives and live vicariously through your previous arguments.

It is true that a lack of a decent system of records for discussions is a great hindrance, but those arguments generally go in spirals, not circles. Anybody who isn't interested in the arguments needn't participate. Anybody annoyed by their presence on Lojban List can ask for the discussion to move to Jboske. But it is thanks to these arguments that Lojban has the degree of sophistication that it has.

BPFK

This member presides over the following sections:

BPFK Section: Modal Aspects